"Fitful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they had cooked, were smouldering; pickets everywhere. The moon shed a pale light and made long shadows. It was really very beautiful if one could have forgotten that to-morrow many of these men would be sleeping for good—"Life's fitful ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... waiting-room, a monument of patient resignation to his fate. His hands were bunched on the head of his walking-stick, his chin propped on his hands; his eyes were bent on a certain spot on the carpet with a fixed stare. And when Allerdyke entered he sprang up as if roused from a fitful slumber. ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... driving wind and sleet. Perhaps the letter bore some news of Cardo! Perhaps bad news, for it had a black edge! She drew her red cloak tightly around her and once more bravely faced the buffeting wind which swept the path before her, and with fitful gusts threatened to ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... heavy firing of the Turks ceased, and a dead stillness followed the terrible boom of cannon. The streets were ploughed with balls, the ashes of many a consumed building were scattered about by the wind, while here and there a fitful blaze was seen issuing from a shapeless mass that once had been the stately home of some proud Austrian noble. Pale, ghastly figures wandered among the ruins, searching for food, which, alas! they rarely found. But, amid this "abomination of desolation," ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... succeeded was wild and melancholy. The moon was nearly full, but its place in the heavens was only seen, as the masses of vapor which drove through the air occasionally opened, suffering short gleams of fitful light to fall on the scene below. A south-western wind rather moaned than sighed through the forest, and there were moments when its freshness increased, till every leaf seemed a tongue, and each low plant appeared to be endowed with the gift of speech. With the exception of these ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... the sands, had run down to the shore as far as the tide would let them, to watch for the return of the boats. Estelle began telling Julien of her visit to the Mermaid's Cave, and of the wonderful echoes which the sailor's voice had called forth. It had started to rain slightly, and the light fitful wind was capping the waves with froth, but the tide was coming in. Julien, therefore, proposed that they should go to the cave, and he would see if he could rouse the echoes as Jack had done. It would be better than standing in the rain and watching for Jack. No thought ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... likely to be at home? Bozzle was never likely to be at home. According to her showing, Bozzle was of all husbands the most erratic. He might perhaps come in for an hour or two in the middle of the day on a Wednesday, or perhaps would take a cup of tea at home on Friday evening. But anything so fitful and uncertain as were Bozzle's appearances in the bosom of his family was not to be conceived in the mind of woman. Sir Marmaduke then called in the middle of the day on Wednesday, but Bozzle was reported to be away in the provinces. His wife had no idea in which of the provinces ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... about him and, save where the lantern cast a fitful light on the fakir and the sentry and the native servant, and threw into faint relief the shadowy, snake-like tendrils of the baobab, his eyes failed to pierce the gloom. The sunset was a memory. In that heavy, death-darkness silence it seemed almost as though ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... the officer on picket duty at Winchester came to my room, I being yet in bed, and reported artillery firing from the direction of Cedar Creek. I asked him if the firing was continuous or only desultory, to which he replied that it was not a sustained fire, but rather irregular and fitful. I remarked: "It's all right; Grover has gone out this morning to make a reconnoissance, and he is merely feeling the enemy." I tried to go to sleep again, but grew so restless that I could not, and soon got up and dressed myself. A little later the picket ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... perhaps of developing the people at large, the nation itself, if that is not too modern an ambition. The reign of Law, broken and disturbed by a hundred storms, but still henceforward with a statute-book to fall back upon and some fitful authority at its command, began in Scotland ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... sees,—whether it be the stripes made by the rain on the gray background of the atmosphere (a species of chasing not unlike the capricious threads of spun glass), or the whirl of white water which the wind is driving like a luminous dust along the roofs, or the fitful disgorgements of the gutter-pipes, sparkling and foaming; in short, the thousand nothings to be admired and studied with delight by loungers, in spite of the porter's broom which pretends to be sweeping out the gateway. Then there's the talkative refugee, who ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... that a taste for versification is, to a press-man, as a rule, what poverty is to most people—a very inconvenient and by no means a profitable companion. In my own case, however, the inconvenience has been a pleasure, and I have no reason to find fault as to profit. From the fitful excitement of journalistic duties I have turned to "making poetry," as Spenser defines the art, as a jaded spirit looks for rest, and have always felt refreshed after it. My only hope in connection with the poetry I have thus made is, that those who may incline to read ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... and collision and confusion of struggling multitudes, and the hoarse bellowing of the guns; and then the hiding of it all under a rolling firmament of smoke—a firmament through which veiled vacancies appeared for a moment now and then, giving fitful dim glimpses of the wild tragedy enacting beyond; and always at these times one caught sight of that slight figure in white mail which was the center and soul of our hope and trust, and whenever we saw that, with its back to us and its face to the fight, we knew that all was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fire,—the light of which, that came and went in flashes, brought distinctly out the settled gravity of the features, and the rugged but grand proportions of the head. There is no better light in which to see an old man's face than the fitful firelight; and no better background than that ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... winding paths of alternate light and shade, sheltered by the latticework of crossed and twisted green boughs where only the amorous chant of charming birds now and then broke the silence with fitful and tender sweetness. All the air about them was fragrant and delicate,—tiny rainbow-winged midges whirled round and danced in the warm sunset-glow like flecks of gold in amber wine,—while here and there the distant glimmer of tossing fountains, or the soft emerald sheen ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... one—yes, I will admit it—a selfish one." There was a struggle going on worthy the soul of this noble-minded youth. He was trying to solve a problem which vacillated between right and wrong. It was no common task, for when duty pointed the way, the form of self overshadowed the path, and showed only fitful ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... the southward and cast a crimson glow far over the sea. This appearance was accompanied by a low growling sound, as of distant thunder, and at the same time the sky above us became black, while a hot, stifling wind blew around us in fitful gusts. ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... at sea the wave was high, While veered the wind and flapped the sail; We saw a snow-white butterfly Dancing before the fitful gale, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to the gods; around it divine worship is conducted, of which music is a subservient ornament; by means of it pictures are given to lovers of their beloved; by it the beauties are preserved which time, and nature the mother, render fitful; by it we retain the images of famous men. And if thou wert to say that by committing music to writing you render it eternal, we ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... literature, if not in other forms of art. Their initiative vanished; they ceased to create and began to comment. Patriotism, with rare exceptions, became an empty name, for few had the high spirit and energy to translate into action man's duty to the State. Vacillation, indecision, fitful outbursts of unhealthy activity followed by cowardly depression, selfish cruelty, and criminal weakness are characteristic of the public life of Greece from the struggle with Macedonia to the final conquest by the arms ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... during the night that Sir Roger was most anxious to talk, and most capable of talking. He would lie through the day in a state half-comatose; but towards evening he would rouse himself, and by midnight he would be full of fitful energy. One night, as he lay wakeful and full of thought, he thus poured forth his whole heart ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... fitful sleep and vivid dreams, Stephen at dawn crept out alone, and hastened to the shore of the sea, where he feasted his hungry eyes on its surging depths, crying, "How long, oh, Lord, how long, before ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... sufficient breathing-place among the other branches, or knotting and gathering itself up to get strength for any load which its fruitful blossoms may lay upon it, and for any stress of its storm-tossed luxuriance of leaves; or playing hither and thither as the fitful sunshine may tempt its young shoots, in their undecided states of mind about their ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... that much from the past generation. We know what to do with leisure in the evening. But we're still awkward and embarrassed when we meet it by daylight. Since we have built our Country Club, a few of us have learned to enjoy ourselves in a fitful and guilty fashion late in the afternoon. But as a rule, even to-day, when you give a Homeburg man a bright golden daylight hour of leisure, he has no more use for it than he would have for a five-ton white elephant with an appetite for ice-cream. And that, Jim, is why I can't speed ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... commotion outside—but in vain. Nothing disturbed the serenity of the night, and when the rosy glow of dawn broke in the eastern sky and gradually spread its glory over the hushed and expectant earth, Hansie fell into a fitful slumber. ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... mysteriously as music. One young nurse, whom we all loved, before any candle was lighted would often strain her eye to read it for us; and sometimes, according to her simple powers, would endeavor to explain what we found obscure. We, the children, were all constitutionally touched with pensiveness; the fitful gloom and sudden lambencies of the room by firelight suited our evening state of feelings; and they suited also the divine revelations of power and mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all, the story of a just man—man and yet not man, real above all things and yet shadowy above ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... his chair, and stretching his little queer legs out before him, began to breathe thicker and thicker, till at last he got the melody up to a grunt. It was not the fine generous snore of a sleep that he usually enjoyed, but short, fitful, broken naps, that generally terminated in spasmodic jerks of the arms or legs. These grew worse, till at last all four went at once, like the limbs of a Peter Waggey, when, throwing himself forward with a violent effort, he awoke; ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... tress of the lustrous brown hair,—but that face! Had not King Hephaestos wrought every line of clear Phoenician glass, then touched them with snow and rose, and shot through all the ichor of life? Perhaps there was a fitful fire in the dark eyes that awaited the husband's coming, or a slight twitching of the impatient lips. But nothing disturbed the high-born repose of face and figure. Hermione was indeed the worthy daughter of a noble house, and happy the man who was ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... girl stood looking out over the lawn, where fading sunshine and deepening shadow made fitful chiaroscuro along the primrose-paved aisles that stretched under the elm arches,—then, raising her fingers as if tracing lines on the soft, gold-dusted atmosphere that surrounded her, she ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... sitting by her tomb In torpor one dark night; When fitful tremours shook the doom Of cold lethargic settled gloom, That ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... of light; the pine-clad hills ceased to have form; the water in the lake was lost to all sense but that of hearing; and upon nearer objects the thinly sprinkled snow bestowed no distinctness of outline, but only a weird show of whitish shapes. The water gave forth fitful sobs. At intervals there were sounds round the house, as of stealthy feet, or of quick pattering feet, or of trailing garments—this was the wind busy among ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... a wide literary and scientific territory. Humped over my fitful register I discussed the Nebular Hypothesis. My poets and scientists not merely told me of things I had never known, they confirmed me in certain conceptions which had come to me without effort in the past. I became an evolutionist in the fullest ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... back against the wall, struggled and contrived to get her foot on Will's bent knee. Another struggle sent her breast-high above the sea of sweating faces. There was fitful light enough to see her by, because the man who held a pine torch was privileged. If there had not been hot sparks scattering from the thing doubtless they would have closed in on him and crushed it down, and out, but he had elbow-room, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... spring day. The afternoon sun glistened with fitful, feeble rays on the windows of the old house of Kirklands, and unpleasant little gusts of east wind came eddying round its ancient gables, and sweeping along its broad walks and shrubberies, sending a chill to ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... Comte, roused from fitful slumbers and trying to gather his wandering wits, put his head out of the window: "What is it, Pierre?" he called out loudly. "What ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... tomb: his will had directed that he should sleep not in the vaults of his haughty line; and his last dwelling is surrounded by a green and pleasant spot. The trees shadow it like a temple; and a silver though fitful brook wails with a constant yet not ungrateful dirge at the foot of the hill on which the tomb is placed. I have stood there in those ardent years when our wishes know no boundary and our ambition no curb; yet, even then, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lifted to one side, and disclosed to view the entrance to a natural cave, into the wall of which was stuck a naming, pitch-pine knot. Entering, the blanket was dropped, and preceded by a man, whose features the fitful glare of the torch failed to reveal, the two adventurers were ushered into the main portion ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... sweet girls Grow up to womanhood, but none like her! Hut that bright vision that just flitted by Seemed so like her it made me cringe and start. O dear Asita, little worth is life, With all its tears and partings, woes and pains, If when its short and fitful fever ends There is no after-life, where death and pain, And sundered ties, and crushed and bleeding hearts, And sad and last farewells ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... darkness of the void up to the barred doors of heaven itself. The earth was a grey shadow more unreal than the sky. We could hear her breathing lightly in the pauses between the howling of the jackals, the movement of the wind in the tamarisks, and the fitful mutter of musketry-fire leagues away to the left. A native woman from some unseen hut began to sing, the mail-train thundered past on its way to Delhi, and a roosting crow cawed drowsily. Then there was a belt-loosening silence ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... fitful, vacillating and morbid, Samuel Adams was persistent, undeviating, and sanity itself. While Samuel Adams never abated by a hair his opposition to the British policy, James Otis, who at the outset had given the watch-word to the patriots, later, after Parliament ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... example which remotely concerns us, a noble structure on Riverside Drive, facing the lordly Hudson and the majestic Palisades that form its farther wall. And, for the horde of Goths and Visigoths, Huns and Vandals, drunkenly reeling in the fitful light of camp-fires, chanting weird battle-runes, fighting for captive vestals, and bickering in uncouth tongues over the golden spoils, what have we now to make the parallel convince? Why, the same Barbarians, actually; the same hairy rudeness, the same unrefined, all-conquering, animal ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... lamp's wan fitful light, Glide,—gliding round the golden rim! Restored to life, now glancing bright, Now just expiring, faint and dim! Like a spirit loath to die, Contending with its destiny. All dark! a momentary veil Is o'er the sleeper! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... its doings, but they are not the stream. They were brought down when it was turbid; it may now be clear: they are as much the result of other circumstances as of the action of the stream: their history is fitful: they give us no sure intelligence of the future course of the stream, or of the nature of its waters; and may scarcely shew more than that it has not been always as it is. The actions of men are often but little better indications ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... Edward Stanley held the bishopric. This later period does not come into our story, as by that time Borrow had all but left Norwich. But of the earlier period, the period of Borrow's more or less fitful residence in Norwich—1814 to 1833—we are tempted to write at some length. There were three separate literary and social forces in Norwich in the first decades of the nineteenth century—the Gurneys of Earlham, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... they had arrived, in darkness, leaving Berkley on his cot in the storehouse to stretch his limbs, and yawn and stretch again, and draw the warm folds of the blanket closer, and lie blinking at the dark, through which, now, a bird had begun to twitter a sweet, fitful salute to the ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Mulford and Jack Tier on their sail, while Biddy had played the wheel a "trick," indeed, by lying down on deck, and sleeping, too, as soundly as if she were in the county Down itself. But there was to be an end of this tranquillity. Suddenly the wind began to blow. At first, the breeze came in fitful puffs, which were neither very strong nor very lasting. This induced Mrs. Budd to awaken Biddy. Luckily, a schooner without a topsail could not very well be taken aback, especially as the head-sheets worked on travellers, and Mrs. ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... as the poet promptly declares, the burden of a Lapland song, which "is haunting his memory still," which "murmurs and whispers still," which "is singing and saying still," which "is mournful" and "sweet" and "fitful" and "fatal" and "strange" and "beautiful." Yet he seems not to have known, as our friend now thinks he himself knows, that they express a difference, unrecognized hitherto, between youth and age, and rightfully attribute to the young a steadfastness and ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... in these first half-dozen days out. People grow intimate in two days at sea, as they would not in two years on land. Was it all gentlemanly courtesy and politeness on the baronet's side? the girl sometimes wondered. She could analyze her own feelings pretty well. Of that fitful, feverish passion called love, described by the country swain as feeling—"hot and dry like—with a pain in the side like," she felt no particle. There was one, Mr. Charles Stuart, lying about in places, looking serene ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... the parlor of the Rondic mansion save that which comes from the fitful gleam of the dying fire in the chimney. A woman sat there, and at her feet knelt a man in ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf, On the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... blankets strapped to our backs and rations in our pockets for two days, set out along an ancient and in places an obliterated bark road that followed and crossed and recrossed the stream. The morning was bright and warm, but the wind was fitful and petulant, and I predicted rain. What a forest solitude our obstructed and dilapidated wood-road led us through! five miles of primitive woods before we came to the forks, three miles before we came to the "burnt shanty," ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... at the floor of which Symon pressed a button and a door opened on a dark room, or, rather, a room which had an instant before been dark. For almost as the heavy iron door swung open an almost blinding blaze of electric lights filled the whole interior. The fitful enthusiasm of Stinks at once caught fire, and he eagerly asked if the lights and the ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... could hug to my breast when I was startled by a heavy breathing; and, turning sharply, for a moment or two I was certain that one of the fierce beasts had crept up. There, only a few feet away, were a pair of glistening eyes reflecting the fitful flames, and I began to back so as to get the fire between me ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... the trees, torches of lightwood threw a wild and fitful light over the little cluster of graves, and revealed the long, straight boxes of rough pine that held the remains of the two negroes, and lit up the score of russet mounds beneath which slept the dusky kinsmen who had ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... Ruth dear," I said gently and actually pushed her a little toward New York, which even now was beginning to appall me. She kissed me good-by. I looked up and saw her floating away in a cloud of fitful steam. ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... thing, even for those accustomed to underground labor, to search an unfamiliar spot by torch-light; the fitful gleam makes the objects on which it falls difficult of identification. It is doubtful whether one has seen this or that before or not—whether we are not retracing old ground. Even to practiced eyes these objects, too, are not so salient as the tree or the stone which marks a locality above-ground; ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... He had adventured in blossoms before to the torment of his heart and head. In Spain. He had forgotten the girl's name but it began with an "I." Now in the dusk he faced gnarled and glimmering boughs of fleece. The wind, fitful and chill since the sunset, speckled the grayness beneath the trees with dim white fragrant rain and stirred the drift of petals on the ground. Stillness and blossoms and the ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of the accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney—story-telling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... that blew up the gorge came in gusts, not any steady current, but fitful rushes of air, and on one of these brief blasts it seemed to Mary that she caught the sound of a voice blown to whistling murmur. It was a vague thing of which she could not be sure, as faint as a thought. Yet the head of the white horse disappeared, and the glimmer of ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... towns progress was far slower and more fitful. It would seem indeed that the conquest of the Norman bore harder on the rural population than on any other class of Englishmen. Under the later kings of the house of AElfred the number of absolute slaves and the number of freemen had alike diminished. ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... noise and rude humour, has a word to say for itself on the point of decency. It is, however, but child's play after all, and abounds with toys and games, from a half-penny whistle to an electric machine. Leipsic is now in its waking hours; but a short time hence her fitful three weeks' fever will have passed away, and, weary with excitement, or as some say, plethoric with her gorge of profits, she will sink into a soulless lethargy. Her streets will become deserted, and echo to solitary footsteps; and whole rows of houses, with their lately teeming shops, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... pervasive enough to account for the steady continuing charm of lengthy compositions?... The symbolizations ... mostly resemble patches; they form no system, no plot or plan accompanying a work from beginning to end; they only guarantee a fitful enjoyment—a fragment here, a gleam there, but no growing organic exaltation like that actually ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... Trusia and Calvert in a silence broken only when the monotony grew unbearable. Stovik, lost in wonderment at his future regal state, and a trifle awed at the high-bred girl beside him, added but little to the conversation. The Countess Muhlen-Sarkey awoke only when there was a fitful attempt to break the embarrassment which held all the others. The quondam Parisian openly welcomed each stopping-place as an excuse to escape from such uncongenial companionship. In the throngs on the platforms he found both transient excitement and opportunities of stretching his cramped and ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... together again as on the evening before, but Madge was carelessly languid and fitful in her mirthful sallies, and complained of over-fatigue. "I won't come down again to-night," she said to Graydon as they passed out of ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... a passion for dress. But as in everything else, so in this, his fancy was a fitful one. At one time he would excite our admiration by the splendor of his outfit, and perhaps the next week he would seem to take equal pleasure in ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... long blue solemn hours serenely flowing, Whence earth, we feel, gets steady help and good— Thy fitful sunshine-minutes, coming, going, As if earth turned from work in gamesome mood— All shall be mine! But thou must treat me not 25 As prosperous ones are treated, those who live At hand here, and enjoy the higher lot, In readiness to take what thou wilt give, And ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... days, the fitful mirage played its strange antics with distant landscapes, and at times brought within near vision places many miles away. Sometimes circle within circle appeared around the sun, until as many as four were distinctly ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... would confess, Sylvia fell asleep at once, despite the novelty of her situation and the noises that fill a summer night with fitful rustlings and tones. How long she slept she did not know, but woke suddenly and sat erect with that curious thrill which sometimes startles one out of deepest slumber, and is often the forerunner of some dread or danger. She ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... stirred up the embers of a fire near the doorway of the hut, and the flame leaping out cast a wild and fitful glare over the scene, in the midst of which Hobomok, climbing the stout pole in the centre of the cabin, thrust his head through the smoke-hole at the top, and after emitting a hideous war-whoop shouted the names of Tisquantum and Tockamahamon at the top of his voice, for one of the women ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... "at daggers drawn." I am sorry to say that John Broom's fitful industry was still kept for his own fancies. To climb trees, to run races with the sheep dog, to cut grotesque sticks, gather hedge fruits, explore a bog, or make new friends among beasts and birds—at such matters he would labor with feverish zeal. But so far from ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... showed that the morning was not far away. A few stars shone down through the sky-light. The house was still as the grave, and the only sound to break the silence was the rushing of the wind round the walls and over the roof. But this was a fitful sound, suddenly rising and as suddenly falling away again, and it only served ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... strange and solemn lights in which we have to regard almost every scene in the fitful history of the Rivo Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep and constant tone of individual religion characterizing the lives of the citizens of Venice in her greatness; we find this spirit influencing them in all ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... lonely by the mournful forest streams, The loveliness and melody of childhood's happy dreams; Pale flowers, the vermeil-tinted, lightly fanned by vernal breeze, Whose fitful breath went sighingly among the solemn trees; Sunny streamlets, gushing clearly in their fresh and tameless glee, Sparkling onward, ever onward, toward a golden summer sea. Fairy isles of green were sleeping on its softly-heaving breast, Where the chime ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... no small intelligence and influence among the people—who was to perform the burial service. The coffin was laid on trestles in front of the cooper's cottage, and a large assemblage of the people had gathered round, many of the men carrying pine-wood torches, the fitful glare of which glanced over the strange assembly, where every pair of large white-rimmed eyes turned upon —— and myself; we two poor creatures on this more solemn occasion, as well as on every other when these ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... was not to be disregarded. The wind, which had so long varied, began to be heard in the rigging of the silent brigantine; and the two elements exhibited unequivocal evidence, in their menacing and fitful colors of the near approach of the gust. The young sailor, with an absorbing interest, turned his eyes on his ship. The yards were on the caps, the bellying canvas was fluttering far to leeward, and ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... to order the work stopped, as did Bryant. For some time the wind blew only in those fitful puffs Lee had noted or died down entirely for short periods; and of this fact the night shift took advantage to assemble the fresnos and plows beside the canal and to drive their horses to shelter. The crews of the north camp, being fewer, ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... With fitful gusts tearing around the bungalows, no one felt much like going to bed. About ten o'clock came a hard downpour, lasting for half an hour. Then the wind died away, and gradually the ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... the winter went by, short and fitful, and the spring unfolded slowly. With the milder weather the mud dried in the roads, and the Major and the Governor went daily into Leicesterburg. The younger man had carried his oratory and his influence into the larger cities of the state, and he had ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... are confined here; but beauty alone beams on the prison-yard from the windows of its cell. At this moment of writing, I hear voices from a room immediately below me; fair, the speakers possibly may be, but—judging from the fitful scraps of conversation that rise hither—they are assuredly ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... sat beside fat Uncle Joseph during their long, long drive, relatives of hers were indeed going into fits; at least, so Florence would have described their gestures and incoherences of comment. Moreover, after the movies, straight into such a fitful scene did the luckless Herbert walk when urged homeward by thoughts of food, at about six that evening. Henry Rooter had strongly advised him against entering ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... surface of the water, as if the engulfed orb cast a sigh of satisfaction across the world. The twilight was short, night fell with its myriad stars. Pere Lastique took the oars, and they saw that the sea was phosphorescent. Jeanne and the vicomte, side by side, watched the fitful gleams in the wake of the boat. They were hardly thinking, but simply gazing vaguely, breathing in the beauty of the evening in a state of delicious contentment; Jeanne had one hand on the seat and her neighbor's finger touched it as if ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Part had been five years in print when Spohr composed his "Faust," but it is based not on the great German poet's version of the legend, but on the old sources. This opera has still life, though it is fitful and feeble, in Germany, and was produced in London by a German company in 1840 and by an Italian in 1852, when the composer conducted it; but I have never heard of a representation in America. Between Spohr's "Faust," written in 1813 and performed in 1818, and Boito's "Mefistofele," ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... already an obsolete arm. Invading hosts could never be victualled for more than three months, or stand a winter campaign; English troops were ploughmen by profession and soldiers only by chance; Henry VII.'s treasure was exhausted, and efforts to raise money for fitful and futile inroads nearly produced a revolt. Henry VIII. himself was writing that to provide for these inroads would prevent him keeping an army in Ireland; and Wolsey was declaring that for the same reason English interests in Scotland must take ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... under strong emotion turns to purple, and when she chose could melt and appeal like a dumb creature's, whose only means of communicating their wants is through their eyes. The lashes were long and curved; her complexion delicate as a rose leaf, with a fitful color vanishing and re-appearing in the peachy cheek apparently as she willed it. Her hair, a rare tint of golden auburn was wreathed around her head in heavy coils that reminded me of the aureoles the ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... pulled a piece of the blind to one side, and a fitful gleam of sunlight, that dances in a heartless manner, flickers in and out of the room, nay, even strays in its ghastly mirth across the bed where the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... farce. Men are not all either knaves or heroes. Women are neither angels nor furies. And yet if you depended upon much of the literature of the day, you would get the idea that life, instead of being something earnest, something practical, is a fitful and fantastic and extravagant thing. How poorly prepared are that young man and woman for the duties of to-day who spent last night wading through brilliant passages descriptive of magnificent knavery and wickedness! The man will be looking all day long for ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... of visitors, and when walking with them on the terraces, his thoughts ran on Mount Rorke Castle, his own success, and Frank's failure; and when he awoke in the sweet, luxurious rooms, in the houses where he was staying, his brain filled with febrile sensations of triumph, and fitful belief that he was ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... blast. We had a cheerful fireside, however, and should have had a pleasant evening, only that the wind on the sea made us excessively drowsy. This morning we awoke to hear the wind still blustering, and blowing up clouds, with fitful little showers, and soon blowing them away again, and letting the brightest of sunshine fall over the plashy waste of sand. We have already walked forth on the shore with J——- and R——-, who pick up shells, and dig wells in the sand with their little wooden spades; but soon ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... estimated to be not much more than two hundred yards from the mouth of the creek, and in the direction toward which the latter seemed to be trending, while at the same moment the blare of horns and the dub-a-dub- dub of tom-toms was borne faintly to our ears by the fitful breeze. ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... mountains, seek one of these sequestered camps, take our place in the magic circle, and listen to wondrous tales as they are passed around. There is nothing to disturb the magnificent silence save an occasional soughing of the fitful breeze in the tops of the towering pines, or the gentle babbling of some tiny rivulet as its water soothingly flows over the rounded pebbles in its bed. There is a charm in the environment of such a spot that will photograph its picture on the memory as the gem ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the day there were light variable winds, such as, according to Fuzl Khan, might be expected at that season of the year. The northeast monsoon was already overdue. Its coming was usually heralded by fitful and uncertain winds, varied by such squalls or storms as ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... not, however, until an hour had gone that the flakes began to swirl in fitful flurries. By then the travellers were making better time, and Jim was convinced the blotted sun would soon again assert its mastery over clouds so abruptly accumulated in the sky. The wind, however, had veered about. It came directly in ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was hidden by fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled forward, at one moment he would see the rails like streaks of silver, and the next would be encompassed in a complete and bewildering darkness. He made his way from tie to tie only by ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... and tempestuous; the thunder growled around; the lightning flashed at short intervals: and the wind swept furiously along in sudden and fitful gusts. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... misunderstanding of the character of my friend. As for Madonna Beatrice, she that was such a flower in a guarded garden, why, you would have said it was little less than incredible that the clear course of her simple life could be crossed by the summer lightning of Madonna Vittoria's brilliant, fitful existence. Yet, nevertheless, from first to last, Madonna Vittoria was of the utmost moment in the lives of this golden lass and lad, and this much must be admitted in all honesty: that she never did, or at least ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of the seven Crusades (1096-1272), during which the Christians of Europe endeavoured, with tremendous yet fitful energy, to wrest the birthplace of Christianity from the equally fanatic Moslems, the Knights Templars fought bravely among the foremost. Whether by the side of Godfrey of Bouillon, Louis VII., Philip V., Richard Coeur de Lion, Louis IX., ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... began to smile over the first volumes of Tristram Shandy. From internal evidence in these early volumes it is possible to note with some assurance the progress of their composition and the approximate time of their completion. In his wayward, fitful way, and possibly for his own amusement more than with dreams of fame and fortune,[3] Sterne probably began the composition of Shandy in January, 1759, and the completion of the first installment is assigned to the summer or early autumn of ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... of Benjamin, indeed, a few Israelites still maintained a fitful independence, and Samuel, the representative of the traditions of Shiloh, was allowed to judge his own people, and preside over a Naioth or "monastery" of dervish-like prophets under the eye of a Philistine ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... down the gently sloping tunnel, and presently the eager watchers who could catch only glimpses of shadowy roof and walls in the fitful light of the lanterns, saw the three stop. In her excitement, Fran forgot her fear of the distance stretching before her and ran to them. The next second came ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... now, and more and more henceforth, he began to look on Literature as his real employment, after all; and was prosecuting it with his accustomed loyalty and ardor. And he continued ever afterwards, in spite of such fitful circumstances and uncertain outward fluctuations as his were sure of being, to prosecute it steadily with all the ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... solemn midnight; a dense cloud had obscured the sky, and hid the refulgent light of the moon; the wind howled in fitful murmurs, the thunder rolled in the distance, lightnings glared, and nature wrapped herself in the sable shroud of midnight, and seemed shrieking a death-wail in her ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... these covered days of fitful sunshine, of light, unsteady winds, with a swell from the westward, and hazy in general, but with the land about the Cape at times distinctly visible. It has been my lot to look with reverence upon the very spot more than once, and for many hours together. All but thirty ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... simplest ideas. Every sight in the apartment that attracts the eye, every sound that gains the ear, expresses a luxurious repose. No brilliant light mars the pervading softness of the atmosphere; no violent colour materialises the light, ethereal hues of the dresses; no sudden noises interrupt the fitful and plaintive notes of the lute, jar with the soft twittering of the birds in the aviaries, or drown the still, regular melody of the ladies' voices. All objects, animate and inanimate, are in harmony with each other. It is a scene of ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... 1902 the French consular authorities in Tientsin filed a request to have their Concession extended on the ground that they were becoming cramped. The Chinese authorities, although not wishing to grant the request and indeed ignoring it for a long time, were finally induced to begin fitful negotiations; and in October, 1916, after having passed through various processes of alteration, reduction, and re-statement during the interval of fourteen years, the issue had been so fined down that a virtual agreement regarding the administration of the new area had been reached—an agreement ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... girl's high spirit into subservience to his own was in itself a peculiarly alluring prospect, and he proved how little he appreciated her character by whiling away part of the night over "Taming of the Shrew." A creature of fitful impulse, nurtured into an arrogant sense of superiority, he banished all compunctions, persuading himself easily into the belief that as soldier, officer, and lover he was taking the manly course in going straight forward. "The idea of consulting ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... days went by, Irving Stanley, quiet, pleasant, gentlemanly, and winning all hearts by his extreme suavity of manner; Hugh, silent, fitful, moody; Alice, artificially gay, and even merry, trying so hard to make up Hugh's deficiencies, that she led poor Irving astray, and made him honestly believe she might be won. It was on the morning of the third day that he resolved to end ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... starts, when he could bring his mind to it, excelled in the business. Nobody could train a dog like Dandie; nobody, through the peril of great storms in the winter time, could do more gallantly. But if his dexterity were exquisite, his diligence was but fitful; and he served his brother for bed and board, and a trifle of pocket-money when he asked for it. He loved money well enough, knew very well how to spend it, and could make a shrewd bargain when he liked. But he preferred a vague knowledge ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was great, down where they were, and it made the passageway muggy and odorous. Fitful shadows were flung by widely separated oil lamps as they pressed forward—grotesque splotches of black that half a dozen times tightened the American's grasp on his sword, sure that a guard had come upon them. He knew that their margin of time in which to effect escape was small, ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, although I could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind that blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a screen against the wind, the convicts were closer to me than before. The very first words I heard them interchange as I became conscious, were ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... seen through the open door, had there been any to see, was almost as motionless as a tableau, and it was a starkly grim one, with murky shadows against a fitful light. A ray of the setting sun forced its inquisitive way inward upon the semi-darkness of the interior. A red wavering from the open hearth, where supper preparations had been going forward, threw unsteady ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... been free from the unnatural and unneeded stimulus? Take Burns, for example. Alcohol did not make his genius, or even brighten it.... Genius may have its poetical and imaginative powers stored up into fitful paroxysms by alcohol, no doubt: the control of will being gone or going, the mind is left to take ideas as they come, and they may come brilliantly for a time. But, at best, the man is but a revolving light. At one time a flash will dazzle ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... with her wondrous hair And eyes that are stormy with fitful light, The delicate hues of brow and cheek Are unmarred all, rose-clear and bright; That matchless frame yet holds at bay The crouching ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... man, who had visited him that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend, interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions. The lank black hair and deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor were a novel change from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker with whom the Bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhaps natural, with a hearer evidently so impressionable to the lethal nature of his topic, to take ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... bandannas of silk, some seeking a poker game on a neighboring rancho, some bent on courting. Pedro and Joe lay, faces down, under the shade of the trees about the tenaya, the stone cistern into which water was pumped by the windmills that worked in the fitful breezes. ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... maple-leaves made a little island of sombre green, around which more vivid grasses rippled and dimpled under the fitful spring breezes. And everywhere leaves lisped to one another, and birds shrilled insistently. It was ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... earth a thousand discords ring, Man's fitful uproar mingling with his toil, Still do ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... o'clock, on the morning of the 19th, it was reported to him that artillery firing could be heard in the direction of Cedar Creek, but as the sound was stated to be irregular and fitful, he thought it only a skirmish. He, nevertheless, arose at once, and had just finished dressing when another officer came in, and reported that the firing was still going on in the same direction, but ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... long time first,—she heard the quick prompt sounds, which told of her father's arrival. In he came—to the room as yet only lighted by the fitful ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... swarms with factory operatives; and, after our chat with blind John, the chairmaker, and his ancient crony the grinder from Nile Street, we set off again to see something more of them. Fitful showers came down through the day, and we had to shelter now and then. In one cottage, where we stopped a few minutes, the old woman told us that, in addition to their own family, they had three young women living with them—the orphan daughters of her ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... quite near at hand came the boom of artillery, a sound which for the moment drowned all others, even the hoarse, harshly uttered words of command, as large bodies of men swung past the doorway of the hut, and the fitful bugle-calls which a minute before had fallen on ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... deprive myself,—is not the most natural and the most efficacious. What would the 'Black Dwarf' be if every one knew from the beginning that he was a rich man and a baronet?—or 'The Pirate,' if all the truth about Norna of the Fitful-head had been told in the first chapter? Therefore, put the book down if the revelation of some future secret be necessary for your enjoyment. Our mystery is going to be revealed in the next paragraph,—in the next half-dozen words. Mr. and ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... of rain is slackening into fitful pauses, renewed gusts of wind startle it from a ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... as if she longed to hurt something, to revenge her loss even upon an object without power of feeling. Julian sprang up and went over to the window. He looked out onto the road and watched the people moving by in the fitful sunshine beyond the dirty railings. That day, he, too, was in a tumult. He felt like a monk who had suddenly thrown off his habit, broken his vows, and come forth into the world. The cell and the cloister were left behind, were things to be forgotten, with the ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens |
